I’d love to know what we learned from this.
For about eight months, a fleet of bright orange self-driving vans have been rolling around Frisco. The autonomous vehicles — and the pilot run by Silicon Valley-based Drive.ai — will be permanently parked on Friday.
The city of Frisco announced today that the autonomous vehicle pilot is ending. When it launched in late July, it became the first self-driving car service on public roads in Texas. The approximately 10,000 people who work in Hall Park, a large office campus in the suburb, could request a free ride in an app. The vans drove them a short distance to nearby shops and restaurants.
Nearly 5,000 unique riders used the service during the pilot program, according to the city of Frisco.
Drive.ai continues to operate another autonomous vehicle pilot in Arlington. The free service, which is available Monday to Friday, is open to the public and available in the city’s entertainment district.
Frisco Mayor Jeff Cheney did not say why the city decided to end the service rather than expand it. The city is encouraging current riders “to explore and utilize other modes of transportation after the conclusion of the pilot program,” he said in a prepared statement.
See here and here for the background. Do we have any idea how many riders per day used this service? Five thousand “unique” riders sounds decent, but not if 4,900 of them only ever used the service once. There’s a lot of talk about driverless cars as an enhancement or competitor to mass transit. Well, transit is measured in ridership, so let’s hear how Drive.ai did on that score. There are also numerous similar pilots coming, in Texas and elsewhere. They sound great, but until we see some data we can’t begin to evaluate their potential. I sure hope Frisco and Arlington give us the goods.